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“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.”

—Thomas Jefferson

What do you say to your 26-year-old daughter when you see her in person for the first time after almost a year apart? Well, you begin with bonjour when you step off the plane in Paris, and she and her lovely French boyfriend welcome you to their home.

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After that? You can barely sleep from the need to connect, to revel in the luxury of mother and daughter finally together in the same place. And what luck — that place happens to be one of the most romantic on Earth, the city of light that at holiday time is even more twinkly and heart-stoppingly beautiful.

Over the top, too. Twenty-metre high Prada-decorated Christmas trees, the Champs-Élysées so tricked out in fantastic blue and silver installations it makes the magnificent Arc de Triomphe seem disapproving in its more stately splendour. Holiday shoppers so packed onto the escalators in les grands magasins on Haussmann Boulevard that security guards look nervous as they guide them off at the bottom.

We baby boom parents are so inordinately connected to our grown kids that going a year without seeing them seems like a crime against “parenting”. I’ve had gasps of horror when I confessed it had been this long. My daughter Emily and I have always been extremely close, but unexpected circumstances made it impossible for us to get together since she was home last December.

Finally we organized a weeklong visit that came at exactly the right time, when our emails and texts seemed to involve only two words: “Missing you ... missing you”.

She’s been in various parts of France four years now, and I can never get over how fate picked her up and gave her a new life across the ocean, when all I thought was happening was that after graduating from university, my daughter was going on an extended trip. Ha.

Her contemporaries wanted Australia or Asia, but Emily, schooled in French immersion (can I sue?) studying history and French in Montreal, always wanted France.

Who knew she would fall in love with both a culture and a man? A man so gracious he was “delighted” to have me stay in their newly rented comfortable but European-sized apartment on the outskirts of Paris in Clichy for eight days, where they greeted me in the morning with café crème and pain au chocolat. Warning: if you want to fit into a French apartment’s minuscule shower, eating pain au chocolat daily might be counter productive.

If a daughter lives far away, the best thing a mother can do is try to understand what her daily life is like. And so began my Paris education, so different from all my other trips to this great city, as seen from the point of view of two young people striving to be successful in a Europe that is often dismissed as an economic wasteland.

He’s a teacher. She, finishing a master’s degree, is starting a new job at a large international organization. Living in Clichy, where rents are cheaper, was a choice that impressed me.

I now know just how many minutes it takes my daughter to walk briskly to the Metro — about 10 — and how hard it is to get a seat for the 20-minute ride into the heart of Paris. Fretting about my standing, she said, “Mom we’re going to have to be aggressive about getting you a seat.” After I triumphantly secured one on my first try, her Paris propriety kicked in: “Maybe not that aggressive.”

I now know how good her local supermarket is — cheeses, seafood, even the little baskets with wheels, put ours to shame. I know her pretty neighbourhood park where, arm in arm, we walked and walked and talked and talked.

We did all the splendid things too — a glorious Georges Braque exhibit in the Grand Palais, where the developer of cubism’s astounding work revealed that every decade he came up with a fresh creative approach. And a Cartier exhibit that featured remarkable jewels and the stories of the women — Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace, even Kate Middleton — who have worn them.

We ate divinely, shaking our heads speechlessly (our mouths were full) over the finer meals — although I still loved the simple pizza with an egg on top.

We lunched with her “Paris mom” in a beautiful apartment next to the Elysée Palace — a lovely friend of a friend who got to know my daughter when she first arrived. Parents everywhere take note: if you have the chance to play such a role in a transplanted young person’s life — to be an older voice of reason and generosity, do it. The real parents will be eternally grateful.

Thomas Jefferson was right. What better way to discover the point of Life than a walk around Paris? And when you’re mother and daughter? Those lessons are very poignant: let go, admire the life she’s living, don’t ask when she’s coming home, revel in an independent daughter who has proven she can live a meaningful, love-filled life in two languages. Vow, deep within your very full heart, never to leave it this long again. It’s Paris, for heaven’s sakes.

And yes, you can cry on the flight back home.

Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson

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